78：Defying Common Sense
She didn't stop. She continued reading, her voice rising in pitch as her fury mounted:
"Not only that, but the report claims he has built a blast furnace forge capable of utilizing geothermal heat to smelt and cast black iron armor!"
"Furthermore, he has supposedly reclaimed and cultivated hundreds of acres of Swamp Tuber fields that are completely immune to the acid-toxins of the soil."
"The listed battle achievements are as follows: First, utilizing poison to entirely annihilate a heavy escort detail of over a hundred fully-armed, black-steel-rank orcs, complete with a high-shaman overseeing them."
"Second, at the Bone-Sinking Shallows, utilizing the natural environment to slay a Son of Titan possessing a rock shield, and destroying the physical vessel of the High Shadow Priest, Zagar!"
"Third, a night raid on Shattered Bone Pass, routing five hundred black iron orcs garrisoning the fortress!"
"Fourth, the successful plundering of a heavy kodo caravan fully loaded with supplies!"
"Fifth, the forceful infiltration and breaching of the heavily fortified Bloody Colosseum, publicly executing the enemy Centurion Instructor, and rescuing over two hundred prisoners of war!"
Elena drew in a sharp, heavy breath, her teeth gritted together as she read out the final section:
"Personnel Recruitment: He has currently recruited a former senior cavalry commander of the Silvermoon Kingdom's border defense forces, a reclusive ascetic monk capable of tearing black iron apart with his bare hands..."
"...And a former Silver-tier Mage Commander of the Silvermoon Kingdom?!"
Smack!
Elena slammed the parchment sheets onto the wooden desk.
As a cleric who had received the most rigorous theological education from the upper echelons of the Holy Church, Elena possessed a very rigid, dogmatic understanding of how wars in this world were fought.
A Silver-tier Mage Commander was a strategic resource! Even in the royal capital, such a figure would be venerated by the nobility like an ancestral deity. Yet, this report claimed one had run off to serve as a mere foot soldier under a Knight Order's captain?
It was the most absurd joke in the world!
"Grandstanding! Falsifying military achievements!"
"Even the most ignorant street thug stringing together a cheap chivalric romance would have some semblance of common sense! But this Soren of yours doesn't even know how to lie properly!"
"Using poison to wipe out an entire escort detail guarded by a Shaman? A night raid on a strategic pass heavily garrisoned by five hundred troops? Killing an invincible Son of Titan?"
"You might as well be telling me that a mouse devoured a fierce tiger!"
Elena glared directly at Leona, her tone razor-sharp:
"Commander Leona! To fraudulently claim military merit, your subordinate has actually fabricated a fake report that completely defies all logic and reason!"
"As the commanding military cleric, I will absolutely not tolerate such a cancer undermining the morale of our army!"
"I demand that you immediately invoke the Knight Order's highest military law. Dispatch an enforcement squad to arrest this Soren, escort him back to camp, and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law!"
However, in the face of Elena's self-righteous, furious denunciation...
Leona sprang out of her chair like a coiled spring.
Her eyes were locked onto the parchment on the desk. Her pupils were dilated, and her chest heaved with deep, heavy breaths.
Elena, as an outsider, couldn't comprehend the underlying logic of these reports.
But Leona? She understood it all too well!
A month ago, she had traveled to the Ironwood Fortress to meet Commander Galahad and the Lightning Knight, Gabriel.
She remembered with crystal clarity what Galahad had told her then. He had said that Soren, at the Bone-Sinking Shallows—a terrain where laying an ambush was nearly impossible—had utilized extraordinary tactical calculations to forcibly slay two Sons of Titan!
And now!
The Bone-Sinking Shallows! The Son of Titan! The Shadow Priest!
The time, the location, and even the tactics and results matched Soren's records in this report seamlessly!
Leona drew in a sharp breath.
If taking down the Bloody Colosseum and recruiting a Mage Commander could still be brushed off as bragging, the Battle of the Bone-Sinking Shallows was something Galahad had witnessed with his own two eyes.
Holy shit. Every single word of this was real. These were actual combat achievements performed by that monster, Soren, with his own two hands!
"Haha... BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Leona suddenly erupted into uproarious laughter!
She laughed so hard that tears pricked the corners of her eyes. Slamming both hands onto the desk, she looked at Elena, her wild eyes burning with irrepressible ecstasy.
"A fake report? Falsifying military achievements?"
Leona slapped her thigh so hard that her armor clattered loudly, her whole body shaking with mirth:
"I'd bet my own damn head on it! Every single word written on this parchment, no matter how outrageous or exaggerated it sounds, is entirely fucking true!"
Elena completely froze. She stared at Leona, who was laughing at the ceiling, as if she were looking at a complete lunatic.
"Have you lost your mind too?! How can you possibly believe this? It completely defies all laws of military strategy!" Elena rebuked angrily.
"To hell with military strategy!"
Leona strode over to Falk, hoisted the exhausted scout to his feet, and pointed at Elena:
"Falk! Look our esteemed Cleric in the eye and tell her! Tell her exactly what you saw with your own two eyes!"
Falk swallowed hard under the Cleric's intense gaze. Straightening his back, he delivered his report in a booming voice:
"Cleric Elena! I, Falk, swear upon the Moon Goddess! I personally stayed in Greywater Village for three whole days!"
"I saw with my own eyes nearly a hundred dire wolves pulling plows through their fields!"
"I saw with my own eyes lush, high-yield crops sprouting directly out of the acidic mud!"
"I also saw goblins operating a blast furnace, melting down black iron and forging it into breastplates fit for human soldiers!"
"They have sixty-four infantrymen clad in full sets of heavy black iron armor, and every single one of them possesses the combat prowess to duel an orc veteran one-on-one!"
"I really did see that bald monk, too! His name is Renn!"
"And that's not all! There really is an advanced Mage in the village, researching spells up on the cliff face!"
Falk grew increasingly agitated as he spoke, his face flushing crimson:
"Commander! Lord Soren isn't lying! He even carved gravestones for the fallen soldiers in the village! Right now, the morale of the six hundred soldiers stationed at Greywater Village is a hundred times higher than that of those greenskin orcs!"
Falk's vividly detailed, firsthand account struck Elena's preconceived notions like a sledgehammer!
Her facade of rigorous, dogmatic certainty was thoroughly shattered in that instant.
The color drained from Elena's red lips, and she stumbled half a step backward.
The knowledge passed down through centuries dictated that knights only charged on horseback, mages were entities to be worshipped and coddled, and crops absolutely could never grow in acidic soil.
But... if this report and the scout's eyewitness testimony were actually true...
"Impossible... How could anyone possibly achieve all this...?"
Elena stared down at the parchment on the desk, her voice trembling. She felt as if her entire worldview was crumbling, piece by piece.
Leona stepped forward, snatched up the sheets of parchment, and carefully tucked them into the inner lining of her armor.
"Nothing is impossible, Elena."
"I told you before. Even if the Misty Swamps are considered a death trap, I swore an oath to pierce right through them within a year!"
"I've lost days of sleep worrying over it, but right now? I reckon those Blackstone bastards have less than a year left to live!"
"Oh, and by the way," she paused, a burning impatience flashing in her eyes:
"If you still don't believe it, the two of us will take a small squad of my elite personal guards and leave the main camp! We'll head straight for Greywater Village!"
"I'm going to bring you there to see it for yourself! I want you to see exactly what kind of army this man named Soren—my subordinate—has managed to forge!"
At that moment, Elena drew in a deep, unsteady breath.
Within her pale golden eyes, amidst the lingering shock, a newfound desire blossomed—the yearning to witness this miracle with her own eyes.
In the rear of the Greywater Village territory, a geothermal blast furnace forge had been constructed, built directly around a volcanic vent.
"Heave! Strike!"
The old goblin blacksmith, Cook, stood atop a high stone platform. The massive forging hammer in his hands—a tool thicker than his own waist—was coming down in a relentless torrent of blows.
With every heavy strike, cascades of flying sparks illuminated the sweat-drenched faces of his goblin apprentices.
Breastplates that had once belonged to the regular forces of the Black Iron Orcs were tossed into the high-temperature crucibles. The impurities were burned away as the metal melted into boiling, liquid iron. It was then poured into molds and, through thousandfold hammer strikes, reshaped and forged into smooth half-plate armor designed to perfectly fit a human torso.
The Logistics Officer, Kyle, grabbed the grimy towel slung around his neck and aggressively wiped the sweat from his face.
Pushing through the oppressive waves of heat, he quickly jogged over to Soren, who had just arrived on his patrol.
"My Lord, the forge's output is nothing short of a miracle. That old goblin Cook's craftsmanship is absolutely flawless."
However, upon Kyle’s weather-beaten face, excitement was battling with a deep, lingering sense of worry.
He pointed toward the area beside the blast furnace, where a mountain of captured black iron armor had once sat.
Now, the large storage pit was almost bare, exposing the black dirt at its bottom. Only a few scattered, chipped orc axes remained.
"But My Lord... our iron reserves have hit rock bottom."
"The black iron equipment you managed to loot over the past two weeks has almost been completely melted down and used up."
Kyle tentatively offered a suggestion:
"My Lord, we can't rely solely on killing orcs and melting down their scavenged gear to supply our iron forever."
"The Misty Swamps are vast. Some of these mountains must have natural ore veins. If we could dispatch a team to scout the territory's perimeter and mine some raw iron ore..."